Ian Fleming Quotes

“A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.”

“A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.”

“A woman should be an illusion.”

“As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied.”

“As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.”

“Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big – bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”

“I don't regard James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way.”

“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.”

“I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.”

“I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.”

“If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.”

“Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.”

“Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.”

“One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies', by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist. And when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard', so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.”

“People do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does, but I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetites.”

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”

“This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

“Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.”

“A dry martini. One. In a deep champagne goblet. Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.”

“Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.”

“History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

“People are islands – they don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.”

“Surround yourself with human beings. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

“There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default.

We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folklore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuition.”

“Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

“Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes', otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.”

“Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”

“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders – all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania is as priceless as genius.”

“I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good.”